A Car Blog. Only Angrier

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Leftlane News reports: Ford: no premium brands for sale. Ford refuses to sell Jaguar. Just like we refuse to give up on our impending relationship with Claire Danes. Even though, like us, Ford has dumped billions into the relationship with nary a roll in the hay. Uh, profit. From the article LLN links to:

Of the four badges in the PAG division, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo were profitable. Jaguar was not, he said. Given that PAG lost EUR100m last year, Jaguar must have lost all of that and then some.

Jaguar's act wipes out profits of all three other Premier Auto Group brands. Man, that's gotta be a tough locker room at the end of the day:

Aston Martin: WTF!
Land Rover: Who would like to partake in tea and crumpets?
Jaguar: Me! Me! Me!
Volvo: You suck, Jaggy.
Jaguar: What? Why?
Aston Martin: WTF!
Landy R: Mmmm, these crumpets are delectable.
Volvo: You lost all the money, man.
Jaguar: Oh, right. Sorry about that, chap.
Volvo: Don't give us the chap crap, you friggin' hooterglaven!
Landy R: These crumpets are so delicious they make me want to take the lorry out for a trip to the roundabout!
Aston Martin: Crap, I gotta get traded to a better team.

AutoWeek reports: Allroad not for our roads. What's Audi up to? It goes ahead and builds this fancy off-roader dealie and then decides to not send it here. How can we poke fun at it?

The second-generation version of the high riding A6 is not expected to be offered in North America following a poor response to the first generation model.

If we recall correctly, the Allroad (or allroad, as Audi liked to tout it) was pretty damned spendy, coming in around $50k. The new Allroad does sounds pretty sweet:

Boasting a longer wheelbase and wider tracks than the first-generation model, the new A6 allroad follows the example laid down by its predecessor by using a standard air suspension offering self leveling and variable ride height. Five different driving modes are provided: dynamic, automatic, comfort, allroad and lift.

Thanks to the SUV that Audi is pushing (the Q7), the new Allroad comes with the three following problems: unwanted, redundant, expensive. And lift. Whatever the hell that is.

Monday, February 27, 2006

The Detroit News reports: GM swerves, revives March discounts. Eh, we can't make heads or tails of this stuff anymore. We assume rebates are bad since GM used them often last year and lost many billions of ducats. What would everyone out there (yes, you!) think about GM's moving to the Saturn model of "the price is the price"? Would that hurt or help GM?

The company [Ford] "planned and executed a precise and concrete plan to violently get rid of the labor union activities, with the purpose of establishing a terrorism of enterprise that would allow it to freely reduce its staff and...speed up production lines," former worker Francisco Perrotta alleges in the lawsuit, according to excerpts released by the workers' lawyer, Tomas Ojea Quintana.

Gee, this is how some companies react to the idea of organized labor? In unrelated news, Cars! Cars! Cars! would like to denounce organized labor and put our support behind the torturing upper-management-class movement. Let's go shock some testicles, boys!

Now, not for nothing, but people should learn to drive. We don't mean Driver's Ed and that BS, but real driving. People aren't buying the cars they get tested in; they are buying pickup trucks, SUVs, 300-hp Mustangs and whatnot. Crap, Fords are coming with 200-hp-plus engines now, but the cars don't weigh a whole heck of a lot more. We offer up a simple solution: Learn to drive them. There should be a federal law that if your vehicle is over 4,000 pounds, you have to have special training and a modified license. If your vehicle produces more horsepower per pound than an average car (say a 4-cylinder Toyota Camry) then you have to get special training and a modified license. Understand, we're not trying to stop the shitheads from driving, rather we're trying to save our own arse from getting killed by these bozos.

The 4,000-pound car or the 4-cylinder Toyota are just example to make a point, but someone, somewhere should come up with a formula to make this work. For the record, we totally love Driver's Ed. When 16-year-old Sue was sitting next to us in the K-car, we weren't sure whether to shift into "drive" or "slow love." Then her Mom came over to the car and said, "First of all, I know you graduated from high school 10 years ago. Second, why are you holding whipped cream? Third, where are your pants?" Yeah, slow love.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Forbes reports: Most-Reliable Luxury Cars 2006. Nothing to see here. Why? They're all Toyota products, and to say Toyota products are reliable is like saying Claire is smokin' hot. We all know it already. We also know that a Forbes slideshow is just to show more ads and sell their wares. View at your own ad-sensitive risk.

* You've removed grammar from your writing.
* You make no sense in your writing.
* This chicken cacciatore has no zing!

OK, so Mr. Craig can't drive a stick. We can't. Well, we can (our Fiat X1/9 was a manual dealie), but based on our bucking around, stalling, rolling into Bob Grochocki's TransAm, stalling and bucking some more, we can't qualify as an expert in manual transmissions. Or writing. But to say our chicken cacciatore has no zing... well, that hurts, man.

the Bronco will be built on Ford's current Fiesta subcompact's mechanicals...

Say what? The O.J. getaway vehicle is a fucking Fiesta? We are so hoping Autoblog hit the no-no juice and this isn't true. Otherwise, it's a great time to short Ford stock 'cause this turd isn't going to flush away so easily.

You know, this gets us wondering whether companies like Toyota are really so great or companies like Ford are just so dumb. How the hell is the Bronco going to compete with the new Toyota FJ? Anyway, let's all pretend Autoblog was totally lying and Ford isn't about to commit suicide.